The present invention relates to telephony systems, and more particularly, to an improved telephony system for calling card calls.
As individuals and businesses have continued to increase their use and reliance upon telephony systems, a variety of technologies and related services have been developed by telephony service providers. In particular, many developments have been made to allow telephony system users to be contacted at or to contact others from locations other than that associated with their primary residential or business telephones.
By way of example, personal pagers are now relied upon heavily in many service industries to enhance the timeliness of customer service and other business-related communications. More particularly, service/sales personnel can receive a paging signal on a portable unit which indicates that someone is attempting to contact them, wherein the portable paging unit displays a telephone number input by the caller. The paged party may then call the paging party at the displayed telephone number as deemed appropriate by the paged party. In this regard, and as will be appreciated, a paged party may be more likely to respond to paging if the displayed number is recognized, thereby benefiting both the paging and paged parties.
Of further particular background interest, telephony services can now be accessed from telephones other than a subscriber""s primary telephone, with charges being applied to a subscriber""s primary telephone account. More particularly, calling card services are now provided by telephony service providers that allow cardholders to dial in a predetermined calling card account number, pursuant to which the caller may then make a long distance or other telephone call with the associated charges being applied to the telephony service account of the caller. By virtue of calling card services, calling card holders need not enter currency into a public telephone or incur charges against a third-party account when utilizing a third-party telephone.
A primary objective of the present invention is to provide an improved telephony system for calling card calls, and more particularly to allow calling card callers and their callees to realize greater telephony-related services. In this regard, it is a specific objective to provide enhanced calling card services to calling card holders who attempt to page third-parties, and further, who attempt to page certain parties on a regular basis.
Another general objective of the present invention is to enhance communications between parties utilizing calling card services and paging services.
The above objectives and additional advantages are realized in the present invention which provides an enhanced method and system for handling calling card calls. In this regard, the present invention is applicable to both (i) prepaid calling card calls (i.e., wherein telephony access service is provided on a prepaid basis with charges debited against a prepaid calling card account until the prepaid amount is exhausted), and (ii) to credit-based calling card calls (i.e., wherein a cardholder""s account is automatically charged in connection with calls placed and the cardholder is subsequently billed on a periodic basis).
In accordance with the present invention, the system provides for receiving a calling card call from an originating telephone at a predetermined central office switch in a telephony network. In conjunction with such call, a message is provided to the switch, such message including an originating telephone number. Pursuant to receipt of the calling card call, the inventive system then provides a call processing record that includes the originating telephone number and a preregistered name corresponding with the calling card call. The call is then routed with the call processing record to a paging device for communication of the originating telephone number together with the preregistered name. As will be appreciated, the preregistered name may be designated by the holder of the calling card account and, upon display at a paging device, advantageously allows the paged party to make a determination regarding response to the paging communication with the benefit of knowing the preregistered name.
In one aspect of the present invention, the inventive system utilizes a calling card account identifier (e.g., a calling card account no.) to retrieve the preregistered name from a database. Such functionality may be provided by a calling card service control module included within the telephony network. In this regard, the predetermined central office switch may advantageously comprise an AIN-capable switching device (e.g., an Advanced Intelligent Network switch) to suspend call processing while the service control module generates the call processing record for routing the calling card call with the preregistered name.
In another aspect of the present invention, the system may further provide for prompting a caller to select from a plurality of functions at the originating phone, including placement of a paging call. Such prompting may, for example, utilize a visual display at the originating phone and/or may employ prerecorded audible messages or dynamically created audible messages using an intelligent peripheral within the telephony network.
In an additional aspect of the invention, a function selection may be provided for placing a paging call utilizing speed paging. More particularly, the system may allow a caller to input a predetermined designation corresponding with a predetermined paging number, pursuant to which a calling card service control module will act to retrieve the predetermined paging number based on the inputted predetermined designation. Thereafter, the call processing record is provided to include the predetermined paging number without requiring the caller to input the same, thereby enhancing user convenience.
Numerous additional aspects and advantages will be apparent upon consideration of the further description that follows.